I got kind of long-winded writing it up, so I threw it in a pastebin over here:
http://pastebin.com/YBJcdcSv
And don't take any of it too negatively; on the whole this mod is amazing and still one of my favorite additions to Civ V. I look forward to my next game with it.
Hah, nah, I did ask for your thoughts and appreciate the feedback. :3
Regarding the points you made:
#1: Part of the reason for the heavy emphasis on nanomaterials is that I did receive some comments that there wasn't
enough to do with Nanomaterials -- some people had a glut without enough to use it on. Another factor is that most of the unit lines that use Nanomaterials used a strategic resource in the previous eras: Jet Fighters, Stealth Bombers, Rocket Artillery, Helicopter Gunships, and Modern Armor all use Aluminum, while Nuclear Subs use Uranium. The Bio-Titan, Nexus, and Crawler are all "superweapons", and thus I had them require both Nanomaterials and Uranium to restrict their production a bit. X-Coms gained a Nanomaterails requirement because they felt "elite" and I wanted to restrict their production compared to more conventional military units (although they also gained a strength increase to 120). This leaves just the Nanohives that arguably could lose the Nanomaterials requirement (the "cybernetics" track is already pretty heavy in demanding Nanomaterials). I will probably increase the yield from Nucleonic Foundries, however, and add a Nanomaterials bonus to the Utility Fog, to increase the supply of Nanomaterials a bit. I may also tweak the Hyperstructure wonders to be a bit stronger, just to help justify their high Nanomaterials cost. (They're supposed to be super end game wonders... XD)
#2: This was one of the criticisms I expected.
In the end, I think it's something that does come down to personal taste -- when preparing v6, I asked one of my friends whether or not I should go ahead with my plans to make the buildings more exclusive, and he was all in favor of the idea. Some people like the exclusivity and some people don't. If I were to do a massive revision of Future Worlds I might consider toning down that element of it, but for the time being I wanted to run with the idea and see how it turned out. I do feel the buildings reflect more different approaches to similar problems -- there's no reason you couldn't have a genemod lab and a vertical farm to genetically tweak your crops, but the genemod lab line is based more around modify plants and animals used in the open environment, while the vertical farm line is based more around enclosed and controlled environments (ultimately permitting the growth of crops in orbital environments), so it's more of a question of "what sort of environment do we grow our crops in?". The Network Backbone vs. Information Hub is a question of a spread out, interconnected society vs. a very centralized one, while the Autoplant vs. Biofactory is about mechanical vs. organic approaches to industrial production. You could have a society that embraced both, but most likely you'd have ones that favored one approach over the other, and the exclusions kind of reflect that. Perhaps not well, and in a way that frustrates completionists, but I do like the idea.
(And, while it contrasts the BNW design philosophy, it was heavily inspired by some of the discussions in the Beyond Earth forums about the affinities, by players that wish the affinities had had a stronger identity...)
The Aquaculture Lab vs. the Undersea Mining Platform has always been tricky to balance -- I've previously been told the Undersea Mining Platform was underpowered compared to the Aquaculture Lab.
I may look at changing the Aquaculture Lab's effects a bit -- perhaps having it spawn additional sea resources to help enhance other ocean-oriented buildings, but there's issues with that idea (such as selling the lab after getting the extra resources).
#3: I've tried to tone down some of the science bonuses, but hadn't paid attention to how many of my buildings had Scientist specialists. I'll try to tone those down a bit (although the "hive city" track will likely keep many of their specialists). I can try increasing the research costs a bit more, but some people have been running into issues with the longer game modes (such as Marathon) as the research costs can become so long they cause the numbers to overflow, so I'd prefer not to increase them TOO much.
#4: That's... very odd. I'll have to check the code to see if I defined something for those wrong... Did you have a Launch Facility built?
Anyways, thanks again for the feedback!
